


(I Can) Brew this All Day

by tisfan



Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/M, First Dates, Minor Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Pets, customer relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24408346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Bucky Barnes Bingo: Square Filled C5: Bucky/Wanda
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Wanda Maximoff
Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1419529
Comments: 52
Kudos: 90
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowerofthewolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerofthewolf/gifts).



> Bucky Barnes Bingo: Square Filled C5: Bucky/Wanda

“You’re a fright,” Steve complained as she walked in through the employee entrance at Brew This All Day coffee. “Did someone throw a bucket of water at you?”

“It’s _raining_ ,” Wanda said, scowling. She knew her hair looked terrible, practically plastered to her head. She’d had an umbrella when she left for work, but it had gotten snatched up by the wind and by the time she chased it down, it didn’t seem to matter. She was already soaked through. 

Usually, she kept a spare dress in her work-locker for just such occasions, but she’d had to wear one last week when a customer did a “prank” and chucked an extra large frozen drink at her (with extra whip) so he could film it for his YouTube channel.

Steve had put him on the not-welcome-back list, but it probably didn’t matter. She was sure that the asshole had gotten fifty million hits or whatever and collected his cash from YouTube and he’d go around the rest of the city doing it to other baristas.

Whatever. She was going to have to work in a cold, wet dress and soaking shoes today and her hair was a mess.

“Your boy’s here,” Clint added. “I mean, I don’t get it. I can’t look at a customer without feeling contempt, so the idea of flirting with them really just-- they’re customers, therefore, idiots.”

“You’re an idiot,” Wanda said, trying suddenly not to throw up with nerves.

Not that it mattered. The cute guy who came to Brew This to study wasn’t going to ask her out any more than the hot guy who came in at odd hours of the night (Brew This All Day was one of the few coffee shops that was decent and open twenty-four hours a day) was going to ask out Steve, no matter how many longing looks Steve directed at that guy’s ass when he left the shop.

Customers might all be idiots, but they often didn’t even see servers unless they made a mistake. And even when that happened, servers weren’t… people. Not really.

Even the guys that flirted with her didn’t see her as a human being; someone to date and enjoy their company. They saw her as a conquest or a cheap, easy lay.

So it didn’t matter that she looked terrible, like a drowned rat, and that her clothes were going to wrinkle and be clammy and nasty all day.

He was just a decoration.

Someone with a perfect face and amazing shoulders and lovely hair.

A work of art.

And as untouchable as the same.

“Oh, my god,” Natasha said, uncoiling herself from behind the desk in the manager’s office. Technically, Nat was the shift lead, but Steve mostly had her doing the books because she was better at it than Steve was. She also set all the schedules, approved vacation time, and worked shifts when other people were sick.

Thus, not someone you wanted to be on the wrong side of.

“You look like you’re gonna puke,” Nat said. “Come here, change shirts with me.” Nat tugged off her scoop-necked black shirt with red accents, completely unphased by the way Clint stared and Steve turned around, the back of his neck going brick red. Nat had no body-shame, along with everything else.

Not that she had any reason to have it. She was quite attractive. 

Wanda took the proffered shirt, but went behind the door to change, giving Nat her damp dress in return. So, now she was in Nat’s too tight, too short top. And leggings.

Well, she might not look _better_ , but at least she wasn’t soaked.

Nat rolled her eyes at Wanda’s shirt and grabbed one of the tees with the shop’s logo on it. Technically, employees got a 50% discount off all shop merch, but even at half off, Wanda couldn’t really afford a new shirt right now.

She wondered if Nat could, or if she was just going to count the peep show as part of her compensation.

“Get on the clock, witchy,” Clint said. “I want to get the hell out of here.”

“Remind me why I pay you again?” Steve mused, scratching his chin.

Wanda didn’t stick around to watch the rest of the argument; she’d heard that particular song-and-dance a dozen times before.

Steve was, actually, a good boss. He paid at least fifteen dollars an hour -- as soon as Seattle had instituted that as minimum wage, he was right there behind it. Also, he let them keep all their tips and didn’t cut himself in on it, even if he worked a shift behind the machines.

As advertised, the hot guy was at his usual table; she could see him almost the whole time she was working, except when she was directly pulling a shot. Probably for the best, since she needed to pay attention to the steamer and not to the daytime television god who drank caramel lattes with extra whip while he studied from a pile of books.

Wanda thought he was planning to be a social worker, or something. She had trouble talking to people outside of actual work interactions, even on the best of days, and when dazzled by the man’s eyes, she barely remembered to ask his name to put it on the cup.

Worst, he never said his name. He sometimes used initials (JB) but mostly he used a series of jokes. Manchurian Candidate, Winter Soldier, Special Snowflake. (She particularly liked that last one, which he used when there was an entire cadre of bro-ristas in the shop, the kind of guys who liked to lean on their privilege and tell Wanda that she had no idea how to make coffee. People talked about Karens in their Target, but she thought those friends of hers could use an afternoon with a coffee-house Chad and see which one was worse. Those guys had looked up to mock the person calling themselves Snowflake, taken one look at JB’s body-builder physique and shut the fuck up. It had been _great_.)

Fortunately, there wasn’t much of a line; just before lunch when her shift started tended to be dead, aside from the occasional harried looking mom, or the perpetual student.

She checked the house pot, found it relatively fresh. The pastry cabinet was well stocked. She counted out her drawer, signed in. Watched JB from the corner of her eye. He looked up as she came into the room, smiled, and then went back to scowling at his papers and books and computer.

She did a round of the floor, picked up a few stray napkins and straw papers, wiped down the tables. 

“Get you a refill?” she chirped, just like he was any other customer.

“Oh, would you?” JB asked, sounding like she’d offered a drowning man a lifeline.

“Sure, what are you drinking today?”

“Double-double,” JB said. “I’ve got an exam in--” he checked his watch, “three hours.”

“Sounds fun,” Wanda said. “I have a short shift today, I’m off in six hours.”

JB looked up at her, eyes going wide. “Are--”

“I mean, are-- if you-- just saying--”

“Are you asking me out on a post-exam date?” The only thing good about the entire situation is that he seemed just as flustered and embarrassed as she did. And he hadn’t immediately told her he was in a relationship. Or gay.

“I mean-- if you wanted to, then, you know. Yes?” Wanda waved her hands around, wondering if a convenient hole would ever open up in the ground and swallow her. No such luck.

“Yeah, then, sure,” JB said. “I, yeah. I’ll either want to celebrate. This is my last exam before I get my degree, fingers crossed--” Wanda dutifully crossed her fingers for him “-- or I’ll want to drown myself in beer if it goes badly. In either case, company would be nice.”

“Yeah,” Wanda said. “Okay. We’ll do that, then. You can pick me up here, the red line’s just up the road, go anywhere you want.”

“Sure thing,” JB said. He jotted something down on a paper napkin-- when he handed it to her, it was a phone number. “Text me in a bit, then I’ll have your number and you’ll have mine. Just-- just in case.”

Wanda nodded.

She took the napkin, went back and got his double-double, and then got caught up in an entire busload of tourists from Maryland, none of whom had been in a coffee shop that wasn’t Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks in their life, and by the time she texted him, he was already gone to his exam.

_Just sitting down. Wish me luck._

Wanda debated her list of emojis for a bit, and then sent him a snowflake, a four leaf clover, thumbs up, and several coffee and tea cups. Waited a few minutes, then sent a wine glass, a plate, and an OK.

_OK Wine_

“Somebody’s happy,” Steve commented, looking at her beaming at her phone.

“I have a date,” Wanda said.

“With Snowflake?”

“Yeah?”

“Good for you. Guess I owe Nat twenty dollars.”

“Why?”

“I bet that I’d ask Tony out before you’d get up the nerve to ask JB.”

“So, uh. You don’t happen to know his actual name, do you?”

Steve just laughed and walked away.

_Awkward._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky talks to his cat a lot, and Alpine shows appropriate amounts of feline concern. 
> 
> *Which is to say, none.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> added another chapter to the total because seriously, I can't get these two in the same room ;-) they want to be broody offscreen

Bucky could tell that Sam Wilson, at least, had passed his exam by the way he whooped as soon as he got out in the hall.

Bucky wasn’t sure about his own standing. The exams were mostly essay questions, which weren’t his strong suit, and a bunch of short-answer and multiple choice for the legal parts. Dealing with the law, or policies, that was easy. It was quite likely that, should he get hired into his chosen field, whoever his boss was would make sure he didn’t screw that part up.

But the essays -- what sources he would recommend to kids from abusive homes, what he would say to the drug using mother who didn’t want to lose her baby… those were tough. And they were particularly tough because _policy_ and _the right thing_ didn’t actually meet up very often.

He turned in his blue book and headed out the door. 

“Don’t worry, man,” Sam said, as soon as Bucky rounded the corner. “I’m sure you did fine.”

“ _Fine_ don’t mean I wouldn’t rather punch some middle-aged, rich guy in the face for suggesting putting a kid in the foster system is better than getting mom the help she needs.”

“Moral crusades after we have jobs,” Sam suggested. “You’re going to Trivia Night, right?”

“I have a date,” Bucky admitted.

“You? Mr. Murder Glare? Have a date?”

“Stranger things have happened,” Bucky said. “Sharon said yes to you, after all.”

“True. Well, great, bring her to Trivia Night,” Sam said. Which was an idea, because really, Bucky hadn’t been dating in a while, and he wasn’t entirely sure what people did on dates anymore. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted to do Trivia Night. It was part of their group activities, but he’d just taken an _exam_.

Bucky hummed. Well, maybe. He took out his phone, thumbed a quick message. _You up for pub food and team trivia?_

At least if he asked, she had the opportunity to say no, or make an alternative suggestion. _I mean, if you want._

_How chill are your teammates?_

Bucky considered it. Sam tended to be the undisputed team leader -- that man knew more useless facts than anyone who hadn’t been on Jeopardy. But that said, he never yelled at anyone for not knowing the answer. Which the team that often won at the bar where they all hung out -- well, Bucky’d seen that team captain giving some of his mates shit after blowing a final round.

 _We’re not too bad. We don’t win a lot, though._

_I don’t really drink beer. Do they have a cocktail menu?_

_Yeah. Sharon would kill someone if she couldn’t have her frozen strawberry margarita._

_All right. I’m in._

“Ok,” Bucky said. “She’s up for it. Don’t harass her or nothin’.”

“You like her?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t really know yet, do I?” Bucky said. “First date and all. That said, you shouldn’t harass her even if I didn’t like her. That’s just rude.”

“Rude is my middle name,” Sam said.

“No, it’s not. It’s Thomas.”

“Close enough,” Sam said. “You’ve met the two Thomases we know. They’re both assholes.”

“Nominative determinism,” Bucky said. “All Toms are assholes, all Kevins work in tech support.”

Which didn’t change Bucky’s problem much; he still didn’t actually know what her name _was_. But he wasn’t about to tell Sam that. Sam would never let him hear the end of it. It was one of the problems with people you knew, but you didn’t know. 

He’d run into one of his professors at the K-mart not all that many weeks ago and had the same problem -- seeing the man out of context like that, he’d almost not recognized him, and then when he did, he couldn’t remember what the guy’s name was. It was like his brain blue screened out entirely.

“So, new girl, tell me about her?”

“I don’t know, Sam. First date, remember? I just told you ten minutes ago. Are you going senile already?”

“ _You’re_ the old man around here, in case you’ve forgotten.”

It didn’t seem to dissuade Sam at all, as Bucky dodged questions the whole walk back to Bucky’s subway station, and then onto the station until Sam switched lines.

Bucky didn’t really have anything for him, and Sam knew it. He was just being an asshole.

Because that’s what Sam did. He bugged the shit out of Bucky, in such a way that Bucky found himself grinning and shaking his head rather than being actually mad. Sam was hard to be mad at. And then, whenever Sam was having a bad day, Bucky babied the crap out of him, because that’s what annoyed Sam.

It was a mutual annoyance relationship.

He got home, reassured Alpine that yes, he still existed. Sometimes Bucky wondered if his cat could hear him coming and got to that spot in front of the door just in time, or if Alpine was there the whole time Bucky was gone. One of these days, he was going to set up a motion capture camera or something.

Although it probably wasn’t a good idea; he’d see Alpine moping around and then never want to leave the house again. “Bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Your human home, all the time?”

Alpine didn’t deign to answer him; once Bucky was home, his purpose was feed the cat, play with the cat, or brush the cat. That was all. Conversationally, Bucky was on his own. That was okay; he was used to being ignored, and at least if he was caught talking to himself, he could always pretend he was, in fact, talking to Alpine. Having a pet to care for had helped Bucky immensely on the days when getting out of bed was harder than it needed to be.

“So, I have a date,” he told the cat, stripping out of his clothes and hitting the shower. 

Alpine trotted along after him, then licked a paw. _Not very interesting._

“You’ll probably like her,” Bucky said. “She seems very nice. Quiet, but intense. Like she feels a lot, but doesn’t know what to say.”

Alpine paused mid-wash. _Are you bringing her home?_

“No, probably not tonight,” Bucky said. “It’s only our first date. Do you want her to think I’m fast?”

_Then I don’t care._

Bucky wondered if other people carried on completely imaginary conversations with their pets.

Probably. He hoped so, at any rate.

He toweled his hair dry, combed some product into it. Got dressed, checked out his backside in the mirror. “What do you think? Do I look okay?”

Alpine sniffed. _For a human._

He dumped tinned food into Alpine’s dish and sat down at the table while Alpine ate it. Alpine was a social eater -- he would hardly take a bite if Bucky wasn’t sitting with him. At first it had been annoying, and then it became a habit to eat breakfast with the cat. 

“Wish me luck,” he said, after Alpine finished his dinner and had a drink of water.

_Good luck. Come home and play with the cat soon!_


	3. Chapter 3

Sam had beaten everyone there, like always. Sometimes Bucky thought that man could fly. He waved Bucky over as soon as they entered the bar; he’d snagged a large three sided booth. “So, do you pee a lot, or can you hold it,” was literally the first thing out of his mouth.

Wanda blinked a few times and her face turned pink. It didn’t go well with her jacket.

“Samuel!”

“Don’t full-name me, Barnes, you know I can retaliate. I’m just asking because of the seating. You know Sharon can’t. My girl. You get two drinks into her and she’s running for the ladies room. With the way we’re sitting, that means everyone between you and the end gotta get up.”

“I drink a lot of coffee,” Wanda said. “I think I can handle it.”

“Good to know, good to know. You a hot wings girl, or a living-on-the-edge-with-catsup?”

“Is there an option for Cheese Fries, or fried pickles or mozzarella sticks?”

“Cheese sticks it is, pick a side, doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “We just don’t want people reaching over the food to get their wings. Not since Barnes dropped a stupid-hot wing into the beer pitcher.”

“I can see that as being uncomfortable,” Wanda said. “The real question is, did you drink the beer _anyway_?”

“She’s got you there,” Bucky said, laughing. Sam would never _waste beer_. Bucky had to admit, he was impressed. Sam usually overwhelmed the shit out of people just by being himself.

“So, what’s your trivia speciality?”

“I’m pretty good at video games,” Wanda said. “I mean, not just playing, but knowing random stuff about them. And marine biology.”

“Such as?”

“Well, did you know that in the 90’s, NASA launched jellyfish into space as babies to see if jellyfish were capable of reproducing in microgravity conditions?”

“I can’t say I did,” Sam said.

“So, what happened to them? The jellyfish, I mean?” Bucky wondered about space-going jellyfish.

“The original two thousand were pretty much fine, did their jelly-thing. The new generation, on the other hand, couldn’t adapt to being back on earth particularly well.”

Bucky wondered if they’d put the jellyfish back in space. Probably not, so he decided not to ask.

“Well, if I need to know about deep sea critters, you’re my girl,” Sam said, nodding. “I don’t know what will be on the evening’s trivia contest, but--”

Not long after that, Sharon showed up. She moved her head so that Sam’s greeting kiss landed in her hair. “No, no kisses for you, you’re mean, you didn’t laugh at my joke,” Sharon said. “Hi, I’m Sharon Carter.”

“Sam’s long-suffering girlfriend,” Bucky added. “What was the joke?”

“No, no,” Sam protested. “It was a bad joke, it wasn’t funny, you don’t deserve a laugh out of that.”

“Wanda Maximoff,” Wanda said, and Bucky gave himself a mental high-five. He’d managed to eek out her first name by stalking the coffee shop’s Facebook page, looking through pictures until he found one with her in it and then squinting at the badge. It had either been Wanda or Wendy, and he was pretty sure he would have made a Peter Pan joke at some point in his short-lived career of flirting with the barista if her name had been Wendy. So, he’d used Wanda and she hadn’t protested.

Although he did, suddenly, wonder if she knew what his name was.

It wasn’t like he’d ever introduced himself to her before. And he’d tended to go with JB, or sometimes Jaime on his coffee order because ‘Bucky’ always seemed to get snickers from the peanut-dick gallery or was written down wrong.

And it was stupid how much he cared about a stupid, third grade nickname, but he did.

“So, how’d you meet Bucky?”

Wanda blinked a moment, and then gave a slow smile. So she hadn’t known what his preferred name was. And now she did. Problem solved at least.

“He’s a customer at my coffee shop,” Wanda said.

“Really? I didn’t think baristas would date customers,” Sharon said.

“I mean, you gotta meet people somewhere,” Wanda said. “Clint feels the same way. He says all customers are assholes, he couldn’t imagine actually dating one of them.”

“We are all _someone’s_ customer,” Sam protested.

“If you say ‘not all customers are assholes,’” Sharon scolded.

The first round of appetizers arrived and Bucky avoided socializing by stuffing a cheese stick in his mouth.

“Honestly, they’re not,” Wanda said. “Most of my customers fall into the neutral to medium levels, and then there’s some nice ones, and some really nice ones. It’s just the assholes who get talked about, because they’re so damn _entitled_.”

“You’ll have to give me non-asshole tips,” Sharon said. She squinched into the table on the other side of Wanda, and then Sam sat down next to her. “I want to know all the secrets to getting the coffee-shop people to like me.”

“Why? You don’t even go to coffee shops, you drink that Wawa hot caffeinated beverage crap,” Sam said, and then winced as Sharon kicked him in the ankle.

“I’ll give you a coffee shop tip if you tell me your bad joke,” Wanda offered.

Sam was already pre-joke groaning.

“All right, then,” Sharon said. She picked up a chip and piled an enormous amount of spin-dip on it. How was she exceeding the structural integrity of the chip like that? “What do you call a hippie’s wife?” She put the chip in her mouth and chewed with relish.

Wanda folded her hands together in front of her like she was about to lead the table in mealtime prayers and said, “I don’t know, Sharon. What do you call a hippie’s wife?”

Sam opened his mouth to answer, and Wanda kicked him from under the table. “No, Sharon’s joke, she gets to tell it, don’t be such a killjoy.”

Bucky nearly spit cheese stick out all over the table.

Sharon held up a finger, finished chewing hastily. “Mississippi. Get it. Missus Hippie?”

Wanda laughed, shook her head, her eyes sparkling. “That’s not a bad joke,” she said. “I’ll save it for Clint, he likes jokes like that.”

More food came out. Wanda ordered from the cocktail menu, going through the list of fluffy boat drinks one at a time. The bar filled up.

Trivia night was pretty awesome, for a change. Wanda had either lucked out with the categories or she was a lot smarter than she claimed, because she nailed two of the five sets of questions. Sam and Bucky split half the rest of them, and while they still lost -- because that one team of assholes at the bar always won -- it was closer than normal. He’d noticed Rumlow giving his team _that look_ from time to time. He was the sort of corporate stooge who took everything as a test of his manhood, and aimed to win all the time.

Bucky sometimes wondered if they _cheated_.

Not that it mattered. They were only there to have fun.

Wanda was leaning against him, tipsy and exchanging bad jokes with Sharon, as they got up to leave.

“We should do this again,” Sam said, giving Bucky his best _I-got-your-back-bro_ look.

Wanda ginned up at Bucky. “Yeah, yeah this is nice, I liked this.”

They were on their way back to the subway when Bucky asked her, “so, what was it you liked about tonight?”

“I like your friends,” she said. “Sharon is awesome. I like that you don’t make fun of me for getting layered drinks instead of crappy beer. I like that your-- your whole group is smart, and they don’t expect me to be stupid. You know, I know I work in a coffee shop, but you’d be surprised how many people think that means I haven’t got dreams, that I don’t have an education-- I mean, people are just shallow a lot, you know?”

Bucky nodded. “I know. What do you want to do, if you didn’t work in a coffee shop?”

“I have my degree in Lit,” Wanda said. “I sort of wanted to be a librarian for a while, but there’s this thing where there aren’t that many programs that offer library science master’s degrees, and you have to have one. I didn’t want to move, so-- Well, Steve’s let me do some event planning for the shop; we do gingerbread house building around Christmas, a few cupping events, stuff like that. I enjoy that. Party planning. I did a brunch one time for a friend’s open house.”

“That does sound fun,” Bucky said. “I bet you could get a job doing that--”

“That’s the other thing I like about you,” Wanda said. “You’re not even a little bit discouraging.”

“Honey,” Bucky said. “I want to work with foster kids, with kids who need to be adopted, with the _system_. If I was easily discouraged, that’d be a real bad career choice.”

“You’re a good guy, Bucky,” she said. “I’d like to go on another date.”

“And I would love to take you,” Bucky said.


End file.
